Maya was once caught trying to piece together the Sacred Urn of Ami Fey with her sister Mia after they broke it. A picture was taken of the event and placed in the Kurain Talisman, which their mother Misty Fey held at the time. She kept this talisman until the day she died, so she could always keep her daughters close to her heart.

When Maya was two years old, her mother left the village in shame because of the DL-6 Incident. Her older sister Mia took it upon herself to find out what had happened to their mother and left Kurain Village; Maya was left in the care of her aunt Morgan and the rest of the village. Mia had also left the village to avoid having to fight Maya for the title of the Master of Kurain, should her mother be found dead or not turn up for 20 years. Although Mia had left the village, she remained in contact with her younger sister over the following years, and Maya was even entrusted with safekeeping important evidence for cases Mia was investigating. Maya was told that if she ever needed a lawyer, she was to call Marvin Grossberg, Mia's old boss.

On September 5, 2016 at 9:27 a.m., Maya received a call on her cell phone from her sister, Mia, regarding the safekeeping of some evidence. However, when she arrived at Mia's office she found her sister's dead body. Almost immediately, she was charged with Mia's murder.

Phoenix Wright, who had worked as Mia's understudy, defended Maya in court against the undefeated prosecutor Miles Edgeworth. However, first he was told to find Grossberg and get him to defend Maya. Mia's old boss was being blackmailed by the true culprit of Mia's murder, so he refused the case. The murder was later pinned on Wright himself. He was nearly convicted, but Maya channeled Mia into her body, who proceeded to help Wright prove that another person had killed her. After the trial, she appointed herself as Wright's assistant at the newly formed Wright & Co. Law Offices.

From then on, Maya would use her psychic powers to channel Mia's spirit to help Wright when he needed help, though her powers were weak at first and she was able to summon Mia only for short periods at a time.

Wright's next case had a heavy involvement in the DL-6 Incident, which had caused Maya's mother to disappear from society and had drastically altered the life of the victim's son and Wright's client, Miles Edgeworth. Maya, who had not been keeping up with her training recently, was distraught that she could no longer contact Mia for help. During a seemingly hopeless cross-examination, the ruthless Prosecutor Manfred von Karma attempted to declare Wright's persistence in contempt of court for wasting the court's time, but Maya suddenly tried to get more information out of the witness, causing her to be arrested in contempt of court instead of Wright and allowing Wright to find a major contradiction in the witness's testimony. Edgeworth later gave Maya the money needed to bail her out of jail. Wright and Maya later visited another witness, an old boat caretaker. He had a parrot, and Maya's playing with the parrot caused it to reveal that the old man was involved in the DL-6 Incident. The next day, Wright and Maya confronted von Karma in the Criminal Affairs Department's evidence room; fearing what would happen if Wright got access to all of the DL-6 information, von Karma used a stun gun on both of them. However, Maya had managed to grab a crucial piece of evidence: a bullet fired during the DL-6 Incident. This piece of evidence allowed Wright to implicate von Karma as the real killer in the DL-6 Incident.

Maya says goodbye to Wright at the train station.

Maya felt that she was useless to Wright without her channeling abilities, so she left to catch a train back to Kurain Village after leaving a note for him to explain her actions. However, Wright caught up to her before she boarded her train and insisted that the case would have been lost without her help; she, after all, had been the one to grab the bullet that finally put von Karma away. Wright's kind words made the young spirit medium feel better, but she decided that she would still head back to the village to resume her training as a spirit medium. She promised to return someday.

Six months later, Dr. Turner Grey visited Wright & Co. to request Maya's services to channel the spirit of Mimi Miney, a nurse who had supposedly been killed in a car crash after a major malpractice incident at Grey's clinic. Wright agreed to take Grey to Maya if he could accompany him there.

At Kurain, they met Maya and she and Grey prepared for the summoning with Morgan Fey. However, Morgan was conspiring with Mimi Miney, who was actually alive and posing as her sister Ini Miney, to kill Grey and frame Maya for the murder, both to prevent Maya from failing to channel Mimi and exposing her, as well as to unseat Maya as the Master and replace her with Morgan's daughter, Pearl Fey. Mimi knocked Maya unconscious and hid her, then killed Grey during the channeling and posed as Maya when Wright heard the murder and burst into the chamber. Morgan told him to leave and call the police to clean up all of the evidence. Thus, Maya was set up as the prime suspect.

In jail, Maya gave Wright her magatama and told him that she had a dream during the channeling. Pearl later powered the magatama to allow Wright to see people's secrets in the form of Psyche-Locks.

Sisters reunited.

In court, with the help of Pearl channeling Mia, Wright deduced that Ini Miney had killed Grey and was really Mimi. Maya, who had not been able to reunite with Mia before because she had always been the one channeling her, finally got the chance to meet her big sister again.

Three months later, Wright was involved in another case, but the killer knocked him out, causing him to get amnesia. Maya visited the courtroom to be his co-counsel and was surprised that Wright could not remember her. Nevertheless, Wright regained most of his memory by the time the not guilty verdict was passed.

Three months after that, Maya involved Wright in another case surrounding Berry Big Circus, which they had visited the night before. The ringmaster had been murdered, and magician Max Galactica was the suspect. During this time, Maya found out that Edgeworth had disappeared during her absence, which was why Manfred von Karma's daughter, Franziska von Karma, was prosecuting against Wright. Acting as his co-counsel again, Maya suggested in court that the murder weapon was being hidden, and Wright figured out where it was, exposing the real killer.

In March of 2018, Maya attended the third annual Hero of Heroes Grand Prix at Gatewater Hotel with Wright and Pearl. After the ceremonies had ended, a bellboy informed Maya that she had received a phone call and he quickly proceeded to escort her to the main lobby. However, the bellboy was actually an assassin, Shelly de Killer, who kidnapped Maya and held her in a wine cellar. Meanwhile, news had broken that one of the heroes had been murdered, and Wright received a call from de Killer, demanding that he get an acquittal for the accused, Matt Engarde, in exchange for Maya's life.

In the wine cellar, Maya wrote to Mia and channeled her so that Mia could assure Wright that Maya was safe, albeit very hungry. She also tried to escape, to no avail.

Through his investigation, Wright began to figure out that although Engarde had not actually committed the murder, he had hired de Killer to do the deed. Confronting Engarde led only to complete affirmation of his suspicions as Engarde revealed his true self: a sociopath who was indeed responsible for the victim's death. Wright told Edgeworth, who was prosecuting the case, about all that had happened, including the kidnapping. De Killer contacted Wright again during the conversation, but the sound of a cat Engarde owned gave away de Killer's location: Engarde's mansion.

Wright and Edgeworth rushed to Engarde's house, but de Killer had already taken Maya somewhere else. However, she had written to Wright, telling him not to worry about her and to give Engarde the verdict he deserved.

Reunited with Nick and Pearly.

In court, detective Dick Gumshoe was dispatched with a police force to chase down de Killer and retrieve Maya while Wright and Edgeworth stalled the trial. However, Wright could not stall any longer, and a not guilty verdict was imminent. Wright was tormented; although getting such a verdict would save Maya, an innocent witness would be condemned in Engarde's place. Just in time, Franziska von Karma burst in with new evidence, including a videotape that Engarde had used to record the murder.

Wright used this to convince de Killer, who was testifying remotely via radio, that Engarde was just using him and could even blackmail him. An angry de Killer broke his contract with Engarde and swore bloody vengeance on him. Terrified, Engarde accepted a guilty verdict to avoid de Killer's wrath.

Maya was soon reunited with Wright, Edgeworth and Pearl. They went off to dinner to celebrate. Pearl then booked a room in the hotel that was reserved for honeymooners.

In October of the same year, the Kurain Sacred Urn, which was said to carry the soul of Ami Fey, was set to be displayed at an exhibit at Lordly Tailor. However, the urn was stolen, the fifth heist of "Mask☆DeMasque". Gumshoe soon caught someone who claimed to have been the thief, Ron DeLite, but he claimed he had lost it. Nonetheless, Wright offered to defend him in court, much to Maya's dismay. Still, Maya assisted Wright in court against a mysterious prosecutor who called himself Godot. Wright got his not-guilty verdict by showing that detective Luke Atmey was Mask☆DeMasque all along, but then DeLite was accused of a murder, and Wright defended DeLite again against Godot. He determined that Atmey had actually wanted to be convicted for the theft, preventing him from prosecution for the murder he had committed. Maya channeled Mia, which unnerved Godot for reasons unknown at the time. Godot agreed with Mia to make Atmey testify about DeLite, which exposed a fatal contradiction proving he was the killer.

Two months later, Wright took a case in which an impostor had posed as him and gotten a guilty verdict. Gumshoe requested an appeal, and Wright investigated the crime. He and Maya went to the scene of the crime, a restaurant called Trés Bien; while trying to talk to the owner, Jean Armstrong, Armstrong excitedly dragged Maya to his kitchen to be a waitress. When Wright found Maya in a waitress dress and she asked how she looked, he suggested that she stop being a spirit medium. Later, he encountered a witness who visited the restaurant only to look at the waitresses. He brought Maya to him to get him to talk, but he was not interested; he was, however, interested in Mia when Maya channeled her. They eventually found the impostor, loan shark Furio Tigre, and with Gumshoe's help, they narrowly escaped his wrath. Wright showed in court that Tigre was the real killer.

Prior to her arrest and incarceration, Morgan Fey had left a note for Pearl, telling her to summon Dahlia Hawthorne "for the good of the Fey clan". In jail, she met Hawthorne and concocted a plan to kill Maya. Around the time of the restaurant murder case, Hawthorne was executed for a murder she had committed. A month later, Pearl visited Morgan, and Morgan told her about the note she had written and that it was time to put the plan into action. Godot used his prosecutor status to overhear the conversation and to find Misty Fey to help him nullify the plan.

A month after the restaurant murder case, Maya and Pearl discovered Hazakura Temple via a magazine and tried to convince Wright to take them there. At first he was not interested, but then he saw a picture of one of the nuns that reminded him of a past girlfriend, Dahlia Hawthorne. At the temple, they met the two nuns there, Bikini and Iris (the nun Wright had seen earlier), and Maya signed up for the "Special Course", a rigorous training exercise in which she would be locked in a cold room and sit on a block of ice for hours while she chanted a spell 30,000 times and ice-cold water fell over her. Misty was also there as her new identity of children's book author Elise Deauxnim, carrying a sword-cane. After a dinner feast, Maya traveled to the Inner Temple to begin the Special Course.

In the middle of the night, the plot to kill Maya unfolded. Pearl tried to summon Hawthorne but failed; Misty had channeled her ahead of time, to prevent Pearl from becoming involved. Hawthorne approached Maya, pretending to be Iris, and attacked her in the temple garden with a knife. Hearing her cries for help, Godot drew the blade of Misty's sword-cane and vengefully stabbed Hawthorne. Hawthorne swung her knife at Godot, knocking off his visor and wounding him near his eyes. She then wrote Maya's name on a lantern in the garden before Misty died from the wound. Maya subsequently passed out.

When Maya woke up, she found herself inside the Inner Temple. Fearful for her life, she wrote to Mia for help and channeled her. Mia told her to lock herself in the Special Course training room and channel Hawthorne there to prevent anyone else from channeling her, adding an assurance that Wright would save her in the end.

Later, Bikini and Wright discovered that Deauxnim had been murdered. Fearful for Maya, Wright tried to cross the bridge leading to the Inner Temple, but the bridge had been struck by lightning and it broke under his feet; he fell into the river and caught a severe cold, but suffered no major injuries. Thus, passage to the Inner Temple was cut off for over a day.

The case brought several people together to work to save Maya and solve the case. Edgeworth heard of the incident and returned from abroad to check up on Wright (due to Butz making the ordeal seem worse than it actually was), who gave him his attorney's badge so that Edgeworth could defend Iris in court until Wright recovered. Edgeworth set up Franziska von Karma as the prosecutor, and the two of them stalled the trial until Wright was fit to participate; von Karma would later assist in the investigation after Godot took over the prosecution. Gumshoe and the Los Angelespolice department conducted their own investigation as well.

Iris was called to unlock the training room, but Hawthorne switched places with her under cover of an earthquake. Hawthorne then posed as Iris and tried to implicate Maya as the killer in court. However, Wright exposed the contradictions in her testimony and figured out her true identity. Hawthorne was still convinced that Maya had killed herself in guilt for killing her mother, but the geography of the area made that impossible; Wright concluded that Maya had channeled Hawthorne. Mia taunted Hawthorne, saying that Hawthorne would never succeed as long as she was called on to help Maya, while Wright cited Hawthorne's numerous botched crimes, saying that this was just another one. Distressed over her endless failures, Hawthorne left Maya's body, who then collapsed.

The exorcism.

After a recess, Maya recovered and was called to testify. However, she wanted to protect the one who had saved her life, and lied about the events of the murder. Wright knew her too well not to catch her lies, though, and he quickly implicated Godot as the killer. Wright endured Godot's taunts that he'd never be half the lawyer Mia was, and concluded that Hawthorne had cut Godot under his visor, marking him as the killer.

Defeated, Godot finally admitted to all of his motives; he had been a defense lawyer, Diego Armando, working in the same law firm in which Mia had worked, and they had dated. He had been poisoned by Hawthorne shortly after a case he helped Mia handle, and for the next five years, he had been in a coma. When he had woken up, Mia had already been killed, and he vowed to protect Maya in her name.

Iris was subsequently declared not guilty. Maya, Wright, Edgeworth, and von Karma celebrated the victory, with Wright puzzled as to why Maya was acting so happy after being brutally attacked and losing her mother. With the help of Edgeworth, he realized that she was staying strong for Pearl, who had unwittingly played a large role in causing the entire calamity to occur. Pearl, however, was wracked with guilt and ran away to the Inner Temple; Wright and Maya followed her there and Maya reassured Pearl, telling her that she was grateful that she had so many people to help her at a time of dire need and great danger.

Some time later, Wright, Maya, and Pearl properly took the Special Course together. Maya prepared to accept the added responsibilities she had as the Master of Kurain as well as Wright's assistant. Meanwhile, Pearl discovered an Ultra Course, which she secretly reserved for Wright and Maya.

A month after her mother's death, Maya went on a trip to Gatewater Land with Wright and Pearl. Whilst there, the trio went on a row-boat ride together, possibly to fulfill an earlier promise made by Wright. Unbeknownst to the trio, Edgeworth was also in the theme park, although he was there investigating a kidnapping. About one month later, Wright and Maya visited the Big Tower. Edgeworth was once again investigating a murder nearby, but once again both groups were ignorant of each other's presence.

Maya then went back to Kurain for more training,[1] and was not present or even mentioned during the trial that cost Wright his job, or even in the following weeks. Wright rarely mentioned her, but revealed that a "kid" he knows regularly sent him videotape recordings of the Samurai metaseries when he was in the hospital after a car accident.

Maya as Wright remembered her.

In December 2027, Maya sent Pearl to check up on Wright. Along with her little cousin, Maya also sent a handwritten letter (complete with a crude drawing of Wright) to her old friend, as she was in the middle of a difficult part of her training at that point and couldn't visit herself. However, she had heard about some of his recent exploits, although some details (such as that he had held a trial in the middle of an explodingcourtroom) were a bit inaccurate. Wright found Pearl in his office just as he was at a loss during his investigation to clear Athena Cykes of murder charges, having returned to his office to think. Wright realised that this was the first time he had been alone in his office for a long time. However, upon reading Maya's letter, Wright immediately felt better, and with Pearl's help, he resumed his investigation and eventually won the case.

Maya is a spunky, perky, excitable, and outgoing girl. She exudes a childlike personality, being both impulsively curious and easily confused. She often acts without thinking things through, tries to touch strange objects without restraint, and goes on tangents that quickly stop making sense. All of this has caused Phoenix Wright to question her sanity on several occasions. She is very enthusiastic about Wright's job, having picked out many of the clients for him to represent in court, although she would often do so before consulting him first.

Maya also has a very voracious appetite. She has a particular fondness for hamburgers and noodles, and enjoys pepper on her hamburgers. She and Wright would frequent Eldoon's Noodles, which Guy Eldoon's father ran at the time. Many of Maya's tangents are based on hamburgers, and she has joked that she has four stomachs: one for burgers, one for steak, one for sweets, and one for other foods. She also likes peanut and jelly sandwiches.

Despite her childish and seemingly naïve nature, Maya has demonstrated wisdom through many grueling trials. She is stubborn and persistent, looking out for those she cares about and holding out hope despite overwhelming long odds. Her tenacity, optimism, and loyalty to those she cares about have been important, sometimes even critical, to Wright's successes in court. She consistently puts others before herself, reminding Wright to fight for justice even when her own life was at stake, and staying strong for Pearl despite having witnessed her own long-lost mother's death; putting Pearl's pain over having indirectly caused it before her own grief.

Her Japanese given name, "Mayoi" (真宵), means "true evening". When written in kana, "mayoi" (迷い) means "hesitation" or "doubt". The name was apparently picked from a list of kanji that Shu Takumi liked.

The "sato" in her Japanese surname may come from the word "village" or "home country", whilst the "aya" part has no particular meaning.

"Maya" was chosen because it closely resembles her Japanese name. The name Maya can either come from the Sanskrit for "illusion" or, similarly to her sister Mia's name, as a pet form of "Maria", which is itself the Latin equivalent of "Mary". "Mary" is originally from the Hebrew for "bitterness". This could be a reference to her sister's unpleasant death. Other possible meanings include: "rebelliousness" and "beloved-child".

"Fey" comes from the word "fey" which can mean "magical", "fairy-like", "strange", "otherworldly" or "spellbound". It may also come from Morgan le Fay, the sorceress from the legend of King Arthur.

Maya was originally going to be an assistant in Mia's office, training to become a lawyer. However, the producers decided that Wright had too many allies, so the writers came up with the idea of using spirit channeling to combine two of Wright's allies into one, introducing Maya in the second case of the game as a murder suspect. Maya is introduced in a similar manner in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All, appearing in the second case again as the defendant.

It was Maya and Wright who started off the recurring ladder vs. stepladder joke, in which the main character and his assistant argue about the difference between a ladder and a stepladder. A similar exchange has occurred in all Ace Attorney games to date.

Maya wears the traditional outfit of Japanese mediums, complete with kimono and a magatama. The design of the kimono was modified, making the hem much shorter than is traditional. Her waitress uniform from her stint at Trés Bien keeps the beads in her hair. As a member of the Fey clan, the orbs on her necklace represent how far along in her training she is; in Maya's case, she wears four, the same as Pearl.[3]

Maya appears in the fighting game Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 as some of Phoenix Wright's attacks and also as one of his Level 1 Hyper Combos, in which she runs forward whilst flailing her arms wildly with a barrage of punches that pushes Wright's opponent back. She also appears during Wright's intro to hand him his papers and reappears if Wright wins to shower him in confetti.[4]

Each character in the game was also given a downloadable costume that more extensively changes the character's appearance. For Wright, this is his "Feenie" outfit from his time at college, while Maya's corresponding color scheme appears to be based either on Iris's outfit, or Ema Skye's outfit when she was a teenager.

When Wright was sent on an exchange to London by the Legal League of Attorneys, Maya accompanied him. However, no sooner had Wright successfully cleared the mysterious schoolgirl Espella Cantabella of assault than the two were transported to the mysterious town of Labyrinthia via a book their defendant had left behind. Once there, both Maya and Wright were brainwashed into believing they had worked at a bakery in the town for the past five years. It was here that they met Cantabella once again, although they had no memory of their prior meeting.

It was also at the bakery where Maya and Wright would meetHershel Layton and Luke Triton, who had also been transported to Labyrinthia. Maya continued to assist Wright when Cantabella asked him to defend her in court on charges of murder and being a witch after she was accused of burning twothugs who had attempted to mug her (during which time both Wright and Maya regained their memories). After clearing her name, Maya and Wright then decided to team up with Layton and Triton to solve the mystery behind Labyrinthia. However, it didn't take long for Maya to get herself into trouble; whilst investigating the death of an alchemist that had occurred three months prior, she found herself under suspicion after Layton was apparently transformed into a gold statue by the Great Witch Bezella. Although Wright was able to prove Maya's innocence, Cantabella then admitted to being the "Great Witch Bezella" in an attempt to stop any more people being executed as witches; if Bezella was killed, then there would be no more need for witch trials as she was the source of all witches. However, while freeing Cantabella from the cage that would be dropped into the flames below, Maya ended up switching places with her and, in the confusion, was dropped into the fire pit and seemingly killed.

In reality, Maya was dropped through a secret trapdoor at the bottom of the pit and transported to a dark forest outside of Labyrinthia inhabited by "Shades", who were people who had previously been tried as witches and taken to the forest through the same trapdoor with all knowledge of their previous existence erased. Maya eventually reunited with Layton (whose "death" had also been an elaborate trick) and discovered a series of ancient ruins hidden on the outskirts of the woods. After later reuniting with Wright, Triton, and Cantabella, the group explored the ruins further to try and uncover Labyrinthia's secrets.

When Cantabella came under the accusation of murdering her father, the Storyteller, Maya once again assisted Wright in the ensuing witch trial. With additional assistance from Layton, Triton, and the Storyteller himself, who had used trickery to escape death, it was finally revealed that Labyrinthia was in fact an artificial town created by the Storyteller in an attempt to assure his daughter that she was not a witch, having believed herself to be possessed by Bezella after causing a disaster known as "The Legendary Fire" years prior as a young child. After revealing the true culprit to both the Storyteller's "murder" and the Legendary Fire, Cantabella was finally cleared of all charges, and Layton, Triton, Wright, and Maya left the town to return to their old lives.

Near the end of the episode "Remote Island Syndrome Part 2" of the anime The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the mannerisms of a few of the characters mirror those of the sprites of some Ace Attorney characters. The scene in question is when Haruhi Suzumiya confronts the other characters with the truth about a "murder" that had taken place. Mikuru Asahina performs the same head bow with her hands together that Maya often does. The scene can be viewed subbed here or dubbed here.